Alice Cooper On His Unlikely Friendship With Glen Campbell: ‘We Couldn’t have Been Closer’

Glen Campbell had many friends in the entertainment world, but his bromance with rock star Alice Cooper lives on as a true odd-couple friendship. In an interview with Phoenix’s Fox 10, Cooper talked about his long friendship with Campbell, who passed away earlier this week after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

In the interview, Alice Cooper described Glen Campbell as one of the most unique guys he had ever met, revealing that the “Rhinestone Cowboy” singer could fit in with any crowd.

“He could go hang out with the Rat Pack, or he could hang out with Donnie and Marie [Osmond], or he could hang out with the Beatles, or anybody,” Alice said.

“He was just that all-purpose, good-looking kid that could do anything. He was the golden boy.”

Cooper, with his shock rock persona, was anything but a golden boy, yet he still had a unique kinship with Campbell. Decades after their hard partying heyday, Cooper and Campbell found sobriety and God. Alice and Glen were golfing buddies who played together once or twice a week in Phoenix.

“Him and I were like this when it came to our sense of humor, when it came to golf, when it came to music,” Cooper revealed.

Cooper went on to say that while Glen was best known for his country music hits like “Wichita Lineman,” his early days as a session musician earned him massive respect in the rock ‘n roll world.

“He was one of the premier guitar players in rock and country,” Cooper said.

“Eddie Van Halen asked one time, he said, ‘Could you get me a guitar lesson with Glen?’ That’s the kind of guitar player he was. He was considered one of the five best guitar players out there.”

While Cooper admitted that Glen had “a real problem” with cocaine back in the day, he says the country music legend came through it.

“He navigated through that, I navigated through that, we both came out the other end with great families,” Alice recalled.

“That’s what we had in common, was that we were survivors of that world and we both moved to Phoenix to get away from that world. And we were still in the business.”

Alice Cooper previously told Arkansas Online that in the early days of his friendship with Campbell, the two of them would get into a little bit of trouble.

“He’s still one of my best buddies,” Cooper said in 2007.

“We even got a ticket together, where they had taken a picture of us, speeding, and it was on the front page of the Phoenix paper.”

[Image by Eric Risberg/AP Images]

Alice also revealed that he was supposed to play golf with Glen on the day Campbell got arrested for DUI, and his humiliating mug shot was plastered in all of the tabloids.

“I was supposed to play with him that day he got arrested, the one where he had the famous mug shot,” Cooper said.

“He had played a bunch, and then he drank about four double rum and Cokes. If I’d been there, I’d have driven him home and he would have been fine, since I quit drinking years ago.”

The 2003 incident scared Campbell straight, and he eventually quit drinking for good.

Sadly, Campbell had only a few years of sobriety before his next bout of bad news. Cooper told Fox 10 he noticed signs of Glen’s Alzheimer’s disease as far back as 2011 during their golf outings.

“Every once in a while, he’d tell me a joke on the first tee,” Alice said. “And on about the fourth tee he’d tell me the same joke again.”

The “School’s Out” singer also gave credit to Glen Campbell’s wife, Kim, and his children for taking care of him so faithfully during his health decline. Campbell’s wife helped to spearhead his final act, the Adios album that was released earlier this year.

You can see Alice Cooper talking about his friendship with Glen Campbell below.